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Originally Syndicated via RSS from Broadband Wireless Access

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Originally Syndicated via RSS from Broadband Wireless Access

TV viewers can now TiVo using their BlackBerry.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from msnbc.com: Wireless

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Broadband Wireless Access

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood called distracted driving a “menace to society” Wednesday, kicking off a two-day meeting on preventing drivers from using mobile devices behind the wheel.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from msnbc.com: Wireless

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Broadband Wireless Access

The University of Missouri athletics department is changing its procedures after selling a box of old cell phones that included old text messages and contact numbers.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from msnbc.com: Wireless

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Broadband Wireless Access

After more than a year of delays, Garmin Ltd.’s GPS unit/wireless device hybrid nuvifone is finally going on sale in the U.S.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from msnbc.com: Wireless

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Broadband Wireless Access

A Southern California man accused of killing a pedestrian while driving and text messaging has been ordered to stand trial for gross vehicular manslaughter.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from msnbc.com: Wireless

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Broadband Wireless Access

AT&T said Friday that Google’s Internet phone program gets an unfair advantage from blocking calls to rural communities where local carriers charge high connection fees.

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Safety investigators told federal regulators three years ago that it was dangerous for bus drivers to talk on cell phones while driving and recommended a ban.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from msnbc.com: Wireless

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Broadband Wireless Access

Verizon will be providing wireless book downloads for an electronic reading device, joining AT&T and Sprint in supporting electronic books.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from msnbc.com: Wireless

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Broadband Wireless Access

Originally Syndicated via RSS from msnbc.com: Wireless

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Broadband Wireless Access

AT&T this week began testing a service that helps improves 3G cell phone reception in the home and takes some strain off its network, a growing concern with data-hungry iPhone users.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from msnbc.com: Wireless

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Broadband Wireless Access

Google Inc said Apple Inc rejected its Google Voice application for the popular iPhone, contradicting Apple’s statement to regulators last month.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from msnbc.com: Wireless

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Broadband Wireless Access

Originally Syndicated via RSS from msnbc.com: Wireless

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Broadband Wireless Access

Originally Syndicated via RSS from msnbc.com: Wireless

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Broadband Wireless Access

The Wall Street Journal plans to start charging as much as $2 a week to read its stories on BlackBerrys, iPhones and other mobile devices.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from msnbc.com: Wireless

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Originally Syndicated via RSS from Broadband Wireless Access

How many wireless carriers do we need? It’s a question that’s popping up again as T-Mobile USA is said to be looking at buying Sprint Nextel Corp.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from msnbc.com: Wireless

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Broadband Wireless Access

This week we counted the reasons we still love the 60GB PlayStation 3, we reviewed Beatles: Rock Band, Darkest of Days, and Dirt 2, and looked at why new Left 4 Dead content is going to cost you on the Xbox 360. Also, EA hits the gaming press with the worst PR campaign of all time… and it just happens to be amazingly effective.

Here’s what people are talking about in the world of gaming.

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With the launch of Windows 7 coming up next month, Microsoft is working hard to get the message out about how its flagship product compares to its rivals. Tales of Microsoft trolling the competition top this week’s list of the biggest Microsoft stories.

It started out with Linux. Microsoft training material for Best Buy employees—which not only makes Linux look bad, but is also full of inaccuracies—leaked to the Web. The idea was to dispel Linux myths from the facts.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Ars Technica – News

Apple’s annual iPod event has come and gone, leaving us with new iPod nanos and cheaper iPod touches. More discoveries about what is (and isn’t) in Snow Leopard popped up this week as well, in addition to iPhone OS 3.1 and an interview with Steve Jobs. Read on for the top Apple news of this week:

Apple rocks with iTunes 9, iTunes Store improvements: Apple lays out a new version of iTunes and its vision for the album in the download age.

Apple disses touch, adds video to nano, color to shuffle: At Apple’s media event today, the company unveiled a video-equipped iPod nano, and a cheaper, more colorful shuffle. Despite numerous rumors (and perhaps good sense) Apple beefed up capacity for the iPod touch but did not add a camera as expected.

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Apple held an iPod event last week, but was unable to monopolize the news the rest of the week. Ars looks back at the biggest stories from the past seven days.

Whose fault is it that the FCC received 179,997 indecency complaints in March? Family Guy? The Parents Television Council? A brain-damaged horse?

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While developing Windows 7, Microsoft ran many different performance tests to make sure the operating system was an improvement over its predecessors. One of the tests focused on upgrade performance: Microsoft wanted to make sure that an upgrade from Vista SP1 to Windows 7 was within a five percent threshold faster than an upgrade from Vista SP1 to Vista SP1. Microsoft gave three reasons for using the Vista SP1 to Vista SP1 upgrade as a baseline instead of Windows XP to Vista:

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Ars Technica – News

One of the most popular Windows XP PowerToys has been rewritten so that it can work with Windows Vista and Windows 7, in 32-bit as well as 64-bit. The Image Resizer Powertoy Clone for Windows is available for free on CodePlex, an open source project hosting website created by Microsoft, meaning the source code is available for anyone to see. The tool is available in both 32-bit (2.06MB) and 64-bit (1.56MB). The clone was created by Brice Lambson, a professional software developer currently employed by ACS.

The original free ImageResizer (520KB) tool, which only worked for the 32-bit version of Windows XP, is still available from Microsoft. It quickly grew in popularity as it added a simple “Resize Pictures” option to the Windows explorer context menu. The user only has to right-click on one or more image files in Windows Explorer, choose the option, and quickly resize the selected image(s) without opening an image editor (as pictured above). The newly resized images are created alongside the originals. One of the biggest requests by Vista users was for Microsoft to port the Windows XP’s PowerToys to the newer operating system, but the company never did. Now, thanks to its open source website, the tool has been reborn.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Ars Technica – News

A teardown of the just-updated iPod touch reveals that a camera may still be forthcoming, as well as possible 802.11n support in the iPhone OS. iFixit has been quick on the draw at taking Apple’s latest offerings apart, first with a dissection of the new iPod nano and today with the 32GB iPod touch. According to the site’s hardware experts, the new iPod touch supports a newer Broadcom chip that supports 802.11n, though the touch doesn’t make use of it just yet.

The chip in the 32GB (and presumably 64GB) iPod touch is the Broadcom BCM4329—slightly newer than the iPhone 3GS’ Broadcom BCM4325. The ‘329 chip is capable of going up to the faster 802.11n while the ‘325 is only capable of 802.11b/g, which iFixit notes is “a big deal.” (In case anyone’s curious, we agree.) It doesn’t appear as if the faster WiFi speeds are supported in software just yet, but the inclusion of the chip indicates that it’s in the works for the iPhone OS and that future iPhones.

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The Justice Department is making a “second request” for information about the search and online advertising partnership Microsoft and Yahoo are eager to begin. The department is refusing to make a decision to approve or deny the 10-year deal without additional details.

Over the course of the review, the companies expect to be asked about their search engine investments to ensure that Microsoft’s search engine Bing is a viable product, how the companies’ online ad auctions operate, and what might happen to prices as a result of the combination. The DoJ is also interested in seeing search engine product plans from both companies to see if competition will become more vigorous or not, Bloomberg reported. 

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A new GPU architecture wasn’t the only thing that AMD launched Thursday at its event on the USS Hornet; the company also unveiled its latest rebranding, along with two new notebook platforms. Let’s take a look at both, in turn.

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If you’re a MobileMe user, Apple has managed to add some nice functionality to the service recently. However, you’ll need the latest version of iPhone OS, Mac OS X, or the MobileMe Control Panel on Windows to take advantage of them.

Updating your iPhone (or iPod touch, for that matter) to iPhone OS 3.1 gives a couple added features to the “Find my iPhone” feature of MobileMe. When you send a message to the phone along with an alert sound, the sound will play at full volume, regardless of the ringer volume setting—handy if it has fallen under furniture or been stuffed in a lost and found box. You can also set a passcode lock remotely, in case you don’t usually have one set, which could render the phone and its data useless to a thief. When enabling Find my iPhone, you’ll also be warned that the feature doesn’t work when Fetch New Data is set to Manual.

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LucasArts has revealed the existence of a new original game for both PCs and the Xbox 360, titled Lucidity. According to an episode of GameTrailers TV, during which the title’s existence was officially announced, Lucidity is a puzzle platform game, combining elements of platformers like Braid with puzzle piece gameplay like that of Tetris.

In the game, a little girl named Sophie walks through levels independent of player control. Meanwhile, players are randomly given objects to place in her path that will help her progress; items shown in the video included new platform pieces, bombs that remove obstacles, fans that blow her up in the air, and slingshots that launch her forward.

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Earlier this week, Steve Jobs characterized iTunes 9 the “the biggest release of iTunes in a long time.” We naturally grabbed a copy and took it around the block a few times to see if we could verify that claim for ourselves. Though the biggest changes (aside from the Home Sharing feature) are mainly connected to the highly revised iTunes Store, what we discovered is that iTunes 9 has many refinements that are hidden all over the application. Unfortunately, many of these little settings and features aren’t easy to discover, and may be buried in menus you rarely think to check.

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I have discovered more and more I read the flailing Wired magazine the same way I read The Onion, mostly for a laugh at the outrageous and humorous things that appear there.  In the Sept 2009 edition (their 17.09), they have once again gone down the road of attempting to jump in from on a trend and call it their own.

The Good Enuf Rvlutn tries desperately to make the case that the public isn’t as interested in the best products or evolving ideas, but rather are willing to accept lower tech, lower ability products because they are “good enough”.  Reading the article, you can see that Robert Capps is trying pretty hard to stretch things pretty far, perhaps as an attempt to write a book similar to his boss Chris Anderson’s latest Free: The Future Of A Radical Price.  Anderson’s book has sunk almost without a trace off the best seller lists, appearing in the 15th and last position of the NY time Business hardcore book list.

Reading Capps’ article, it is pretty easy to see that he started with the conclusion and attempted to make the facts fit the theory.  MP3s get a fair bit of play here, in part I think because it allows Capps to quote noted Guru Clay Shirky.   His theory is that people accept the MP3 sound quality because it is good enough, and that other formats have failed because MP3 is good enough for most people.  While this may be correct, the reasons aren’t at all to do with what people are willing to tolerate, but other significant forces over the years.

You only have to go back to the days before MP3.  Most people listened to either cassette tape walkmans, or FM radio.  Both of these formats are somewhat to significantly limited, compressed, and lacking in dynamics.  The top of the line was a CD, which at that time would be played back on a machine sampling at 44mhz (giving sound up to about 22mhz, in theory).  That was super duper hi-fi, high end, and more than “good enough”, it was better than pretty much everything a consumer could get.

Enter MP3s.   All an MP3 had to do was be between FM radio and CD quality, and everyone was happy.  After all, most of the people were listening to the music on their computer speakers, which were usually little plastic things with little musical ability.  If they did listen with headphones, it was with earbuds that had even less musical ability.    The size of an MP3 file was basically limited by the speed at which data was transferred online.   Even when connection speeds increased, there was no need to increase sound quality because the quality of the “new” MP3 portable players on the market wasn’t that great anyway.   As we continue to use earbuds for the vast majority of our MP3 listening, super high fidelity isn’t really a true need.

Further, MP3 is the established format in the field.  Similar to the Betamax / VHS discussion, the better technical format did not win for various reasons.  With the widespread installation of VHS machines in almost every household, it took years for DVDs to uproot them.  It has only been in the last 2 years that major electronics stores stopped selling commercial VHS players.  DVDs offer a significanly better picture than VHS, but was limited by the abilities of the television sets they were playing on.    DVD quality is good enough that even now, with Hi-DEF televisions and the Blu-ray format, most people are still using DVDs.  In the same manner that it took years to uproot VHS, it will take a similar amount of time for BluRay to kill off the DVD.

It isn’t a question of “good enough” but rather a set of circumstances and barriers that are often not on the individual product, but on the things around it.  There is little need for MP3 to be replaced by anything else, because the fidelity of the players that most people listen to downloaded music on still hasn’t caught up to the 2001 file format.  Similarly, there is no reason to move to Bluray because the playback from a DVD far exceeds what people were use to before.

Copps then goes on to name the Amazon Kindle as a sign of “good enough”,  where the product is in fact more in the “early adopters” phase.   While he cites projections of 310 million of e-book sales for 2009, he fails to mention by comparison that Amazon’s overall first quarter sales 2009  have been 4.89 billion.  The sales of ebook materials in that is just this side of a rounding error, typical of products in the “early adopter” phase.  It isn’t a question of good enough, but a situation similar to people who bought huge 1/2 inch betamax tape machines for home before residential size VCRs were really available.  Kindle as a concept may in fact take off if and when the costs come down to the point where the general public can warrant paying for it, or that the software product offer is so compelling that people will work with the limitations.  It isn’t a question of a good enough product (Kindle) but rather other limitations that currently exist (such as a limited number of books to buy, limited online content, few if any newspapers or other productions moving to this format, etc).

Much of it also comes down to not so much “good enough”, but that the needs have long since been covered and we are now down to design and additional features.  He posts the Netbook / Laptop situation, and punts this one into the weeds as well.   Laptops are still fairly expensive, and outside a small part of the market that require extensive computing power while on the road, they are also little more than status symbols for their owners.  Netbooks do all the things that most people go online to do anyway.  It isn’t a question of “good enough”, but rather of needs met, end of problem.  I suspect that most people who own netbooks also own a desktop or work at a desktop during the day.   Their needs for computing power beyond email / surfer / simple tasks are met when they are in those locations.

In the end, it isn’t the public’s willingness to tolerate a lowered end product, but in each case that the product meets all the needs of the market place.  More advanced products, more complicated products, more involved interfaces are in the want category, not the needs.    Attempting to rename “meeting the needs” as the “good enough revolution” is just tagging, nothing more.   It is also what Wired seems to becoming more and more about these days, spotting unrelated items and attempting to rewrite history a bit to appear to look like they are ahead of the wave.   I remember when Wired was actually ahead of the wave, but articles like this one prove that they have long since passed their stale date.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Stuff Channel

CBS is taking Last.fm to the HD radio airwaves on October 5, crowdsourced music trends and all. The company revealed in a press conference Thursday that Last.fm will take over CBS’ HD broadcast stations in four major cities across the US—Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco—though listeners in other markets will also be able to tune in via Last.fm’s website as well as CBS Radio.

The broadcast, which will be the same in all cities and online, will feature songs from the aggregated music charts from the social music site, effectively bringing the “wisdom of crowds” to the masses via HD radio. Of course, this has the potential to open the doors to nonstop rickrolls as of October 5, but we think it’s safe to assume that there will be some level of oversight to ensure there’s plenty of variety in the music being played.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Ars Technica – News

Many people have never heard the word zeolite, let alone know
what one
is. But if you have ever ridden in a car, flown on a plane, or used
anything that is dependent on the modern petrochemical industry,
zeolites have impacted your life. While used in many industrial processes, they are most widely used as
solid-acid catalysts. One of their most important industrial
roles is catalytic cracking, where the crude oil
that we pump from the ground is transformed into the gasoline that we all so desperately depend on
each day. (Editorial note: not if you live some place with decent public transit.)

A textbook might define zeolites as follows: zeolites are microporous, crystalline
aluminosilicates constructed from tetrahedral base units. Informative, no? Zeolites
are made of little pyramids of silica (SiO₂)
and
often alumina (AlO₂) arranged in crystal with a complex, but ordered, network of pores running
throughout it. What makes them so important is that these
pores have diameters of a few angstroms (10^-10m),
the size of small
molecules.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Ars Technica – News

Microsoft has launched a nonprofit organization with the aim of
encouraging commercial software vendors to participate in open source
software development. Microsoft has provided the organization, which is
called the CodePlex Foundation, with $1 million in funding to get it
started.

This move arrives on the heels of a controversy over a Microsoft patent
auction—allegedly aimed at undermining Linux—that compelled the
executive director of the Linux Foundation to criticize the company for
foul play. It’s unclear if the CodePlex Foundation has been established
in response to the controversy: the foundation itself appears unrelated,
but there is certainly a possibility that the timing wasn’t
coincidental.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Ars Technica – News

This week’s PlayStation Store update kicks off with TMNT: Turtles in Time Re-Shelled ($9.99), a remake of the classic Konami arcade/SNES game, which hit the Xbox 360 a little while back.

Sony’s also continuing to bring the PSOne love by releasing three classic games to download: Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain ($5.99), Silent Hill ($5.99), and Syphon Filter 2 ($5.99). There’s also a hefty does of demos this week, with one for the aformenitioned TMNT game, as well as Katamari Forever, Star Wars The Clone Wars: Republic Heroes, and LittleBigPlanet.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Ars Technica – News

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has pulled some crazy stunts in the past. The result is almost always poor publicity for the man and the company he represents. It’s really a pity that someone as bright as Ballmer loses his cool on a regular basis. We can’t say his latest antic tops the rest, but it’s definitely going into the record books (especially if someone managed to film it). Yesterday was Microsoft’s private company meeting at Seattle’s Safeco Field. It was also the day that Ballmer snatched an iPhone from one of his peers (believe it or not, most Microsoft employees we’ve met have an iPhone) and didn’t give it back till he was done trying to be a comedian.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Ars Technica – News

At first glance, nerve cells would appear to be energy hogs. The brain accounts for only about two percent of a human’s body mass, but burns through 20 percent of its energy budget. But transmitting signals by nerves is a multistep process, and it hasn’t been clear which step burns through the most energy. This isn’t a purely academic question: entire fields of study use PET scans and functional MRI imaging to track areas of the brain that are using energy, under the assumption that these are the most active. Now, researchers have followed the progress of impulses down a nerve fiber, and determined that the process is remarkably efficient, using only about 30 percent more than the idealized lower limit of energy use.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Ars Technica – News

Every game has a PR campaign behind it, ranging from videos and screenshots to interviews, demos, and free items given out to those who write about games. Some are better than others, but EA has given its campaign for Dante’s Inferno a hellish tint, and the results have been both controversial, and highly effective.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Ars Technica – News

Recent whispers across the blogosphere that Microsoft currently has no plans to launch the Zune HD in France prompted us to prod Redmond impatiently for more information. We got it, but we’re sad to say you probably won’t like it if you live north, south, east, or west of the US border. Not only are there no plans for France, but Microsoft is excluding every single country outside of the US, at least for now.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Ars Technica – News

AMD unveiled its next-generation GPU architecture at an event today aboard the USS Hornet—2.5 teraFLOPS of floating-point power, or well over twice the company’s current high-end cards. The company also had hardware and software partners on-hand to demonstrate their own applications of AMD’s technology, and one of these partners was OTOY. While AMD gave a number of very impressive demos of their next-generation DirectX 11 part (detailed technical discussion to follow later this month), OTOY’s demo of Crysis running on an iPhone was probably the most profoundly intriguing use of AMD’s upcoming GPU that I saw all evening.

Ok, I know that 90 percent of you just did a double-take—Crysis, the standard gaming benchmark for high-end 3D hardware, running on a next-gen GPU on an iPhone? Let me explain.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Ars Technica – News

When the US Copyright Office first heard about the proposed Google Books settlement, it found the idea a “positive development.” Then, after reading the fine print, it changed its collective mind, deciding instead that Google was really out to rewrite US copyright law through the courts.

Marybeth Peters, the Register of Copyrights, today explained to Congress (PDF) her office’s objections to what Google hoped to do:

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Ars Technica – News

Well, this is certainly one for the “should have been obvious” file. South African “female” running star Caster Semenya has apparently tested as a Hermaphrodite, which is to say that she really isn’t a she, but more of a both. Accord to the report in The Sun (UK), the runner has no internal woman’s parts (ovaries, womb, etc) and has internalized testicles. Her outward genitalia is female, but everything else appears to be male. Her testosterone levels are three times the normal for a woman, due to the testes. Effectively, the runner is a man with a vagina, from what the report suggests.

The report has yet to be released officially, likely in part because of the issues this may cause on South Africa, where the runner has been treated as a star, and the public generally thinks the entire testing deal is a way for the Europeans to strip a medal from the South African. It is likely when the report is released that the runner’s career will be over.

More on this story here.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Stuff Channel

The sales numbers for August are here, and while the overall industry decline continues—sales are down 14 percent year to date—hardware sales are seeing a slight uptick after both Microsoft and Sony dropped the price on their respective systems. “The price cuts implemented on the PS3 and 360 hardware already made an impact on unit sales, despite having been executed fairly late in the month. It will be interesting to see the full impact of the new price points on September sales,” NPD analyst Anita Frazier wrote in the report. Every system saw a jump over July sales. Who did the best? “The PS3 captured the greatest increase month-over-month with unit sales boosted by 72 percent over July levels.”

Let’s take a look at how the month shook out.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Ars Technica – News

A Windows 7 commercial was uploaded to the WindowsVideos channel on YouTube yesterday, but we haven’t seen anyone post about it just yet. A tipster sent the URL over to us over IM, and we couldn’t keep from posting it. The 30-second ad is titled “Good News – Windows 7 Commercial” and features select quotes about the operating system from Gizmodo, Maximum PC, ZDNet, and CNet, among images of a pig, a unicorn, a kitten, and a bunny, respectively.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Ars Technica – News

Apple has released a slew of OS updates this afternoon. Snow Leopard and Snow Leopard server get a bump to 10.6.1, including the latest Flash Player installer which caused quite a row last week. Security update 2009-005 is also available for client and server version of Leopard and Tiger.

Mac OS X Snow Leopard moves to version 10.6.1, just shy of two weeks since its initial release. It addresses a number of issues we reported on last week, such as printer driver compatibility, random issues with DVD playback, some issues with Mail and certain SMTP servers, and compatibility with Motion 4. It also includes the latest 10.0.32.18 version of Adobe’s Flash Player plug-in, which might have gotten overwritten with a slightly older version if you had already updated Flash and then installed Snow Leopard. Snow Leopard Server 10.6.1 gets all these fixes as well as improved reliability of processes running under Grand Central Dispatch and a fix for servers with multiple network interfaces reporting a duplicate serial number in use.

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If illegally copying music files doesn’t annoy the RIAA enough, P2P leaks of pre-release albums are enough to send content owners into a blind rage. The industry seems to consider pre-release albums to be worth much more than they are after their release, and when law enforcement manages to catch a few of those responsible for the leaks, they go to town. Such is the case with four members of piracy group Rabid Neurosis (or RNS, for short) who were indicted this week for conspiracy to commit copyright infringement.

The group was allegedly led by 29-year-old Adil R. Cassim and spent the better part of a decade (1999 to “at least” 2007) illegally distributing copyrighted songs online. According to the indictment, RNS made a name for itself for being a “pre-release group” or a “first provider,” meaning that members were able to provide copies of songs and albums before commercial release in the US. “The supply of pre-release music was often provided by music industry insiders, such as employees of compact disc manufacturing plants, radio stations, and retailers, who typically receive advance copies of music prior to its commercial release,” read the court documents.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Ars Technica – News

These things work like clockwork: Apple announces a new product and then iFixit.com tears it apart, takes pictures, and does analysis that we all enjoy. This time around, the victim is the brand new 8GB iPod nano that launched yesterday. On the surface, the new nano might not appear that different, but for those of you not living under a rock, you know that the new device got one major addition: the ability to capture video.

Like just about any iPod these days, disassembling the new nano isn’t for the faint of heart. It takes large amounts of glue to hold the pieces together, further solidifying the idea that Apple wants the iPod line to be part of our throwaway culture. While the nano hasn’t been getting any bigger lately, Apple has managed to shove into it a larger display with a higher resolution. At 2.2 inches and 240×376, it still isn’t something most people would want to watch a video on, but better is better. The speaker, which was also added this revision, is approximately 1mm thick and outputs sound thorough the bottom of the nano. We’re not sure the speaker will be useful for much, but it is there in case people want to use it. The processor in the 5G nano is of the ARM variety.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Ars Technica – News

At the Mobilize conference on Thursday in San Francisco, Motorola CEO Dr. Sanjay Jha unveiled an Android smartphone called CLIQ (all caps in the tradition of the RAZR and ROKR) that will be available soon from T-Mobile. The device features a new service called Blur that Motorola developed to bring deep social networking integration and Web synchronization support to Android handsets.

During his keynote presentation at Mobilize, Jha introduced the capabilities of Blur and described how it will define Motorola’s Android strategy. Jha asserts that networked communication is evolving away from the traditional one-to-one model embodied by e-mail and SMS and is shifting towards a more social and collaborative one-to-many model as users increasingly adopt services like Facebook and Twitter.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Ars Technica – News

Canadian-based i4i has refuted the latest claims made by Microsoft in an extensible markup language (XML) patent infringement case involving Word. The company outlined its arguments in a 99-page brief filed with the US Court of Appeals, and i4i again reiterates that Microsoft knowingly infringed on the patent by incorporating the technology into Office Word. Microsoft is supposed to file its formal response to i4i’s reply next week, in advance of the hearing that is scheduled for September 23.

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Here’s something you don’t see every day: companies like Microsoft and the cable industry relaxing content and DRM restrictions. But that’s exactly what happened yesterday at the CEDIA EXPO trade show in Atlanta, where Microsoft announced that home users could now install CableCARD-powered digital TV tuners in their PCs, could use those tuners with switched digital video (SDV) cable systems, and could use recorded content more freely.

These might not sound like terrific changes, but they’re significant relaxations of the existing CableCARD rules. CableLabs, the research and development consortium funded by the cable industry, developed and now licenses the CableCARD spec. In 2006, when CableCARD-ready tuners came to home computers, CableLabs decided it would be too much a risk to let such tuners be installed “in the wild” by customers. Instead, only specific computer configurations would be certified for use with such devices—CableLabs wanted to audit the systems to ensure a totally protected content path from tuner to computer to monitor.

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